Tonal Telepathy
Are all of your songs created like this, by jamming and listening?
Most of them are. Sometimes I bring the entire guitar parts for a song along and the others add their parts we did this for example with 'Venice Queen', 'Cabron' or 'I Could Die For You'. Things such as duration or arrangement are of course developed by all of us together. 'This Is The Place' and 'Don't Forget Me' are jam session songs and do sound like the sessions during which they came around. During those jams Flea played the same bass line for over half an hour and I tried various guitar parts on top of it. Flea loves it to put himself into a hypnotic groove. I join in and as soon as he has caught me I will play one part after the other each one giving Flea's bass line a completely different flavour. Those songs don't sound like the bass is playing the same part all the time, but he does.
Which role does Anthony play in writing songs?
We generally develop songs as a band. Sometimes we record our jam sessions. Anthony goes through those tapes and a week or a month later he presents us bits and pieces of those tapes going "This groove is hot. We should write a song around it." We write tons of stuff and when Anthony dances across the room doing his moves it feels great.
When you bring ideas of your own to sessions often these ideas are influenced by other guitarists. Which of your heroes were responsible this time?
I can't really put it down for this one. The songs in 'Blood Sugar' are easier to sort out. When working on 'Breaking The Girl' I listened a lot to Led Zeppelin. I especially liked 'Friends'. I also played a 12-string back them. That's where the idea to 'Breaking The Girl' came from. I took the chords of the chorus from the book on Duke Ellington. I tried to learn one song form this book and played three chords of a song which has at least 50 chords. Based on these three chords and some additional stuff I wrote our song. 'Give It Away' contains elements of Black Sabbath's 'Sweet Leaf'. Back then you could have questioned me on every single guitar part and I could have told you the source and the development of it. It's not quite like this anymore. But anyway, I did draw a lot of inspiration from other music and imagined to comprise the style of some of my favourite guitarists in my work.
Which are?
Johnny Marr of The Smiths, for example, Siouxie & The Banshees, Matthew Ashman of Bow Wow Wow or Bernard Sumner of New Order and Joy Division none of those were great guitarists, technically speaking, but they stood out due to their individual way of playing, something that makes them unique. But wait the more I think about it, the more influences come to my mind. For example, a song by Nightmares on Wax, I think, which is on some Warped compilation. You find it in 'Time', which is a b-side on the first single. When I pinch from others it's important to either take the technical aspect or the feeling, but never both at the same time. If you develop this further from there adding your own signature, you will put enough distance between you and the original. I never aimed at being original, I just happened to stumble into it.
How did this hard funky riff in 'Can't Stop' happen?
This is definitely influenced by Ricky Wilson, the B-52's guitarist. He died around 1985 one of my heroes. He took off the d and g strings and tuned the upper strings to the same note. He considered the low and the high strings as two separate things and often played them simultaneously into two opposite directions. It's a simple way for him to give the impression of using two guitars. This is exactly what I tried on 'Can't Stop'. The high notes move back and forth while the lower ones change chords.
Can't you hear this 'two guitars in one' thing on 'Venice Queen', right?
Yes, exactly! [audio example #2 from the cd comes in here / The "2 guitars in one principle" as heard on 'Venice Queen']
On 'Don't Forget Me' Flea plays the basic chords while you play a legato lick on your White Falcon.
No, no, I only used the Gretsch for the show yesterday. The guitar almost solely used on 'By The Way' is my '62 Strat. The White Falcon was only used on 'Tear'. But you are right concerning this lick. Because of Anthony singing over it and me using a delay it's developing a great effect in the background. The delay is used during the entire song. I tuned it to triplet, which adds a lot of tempo to my lick. In the 70's you could have used that as a solo, but I use it to colour the stanza.
